


Make A Beggar Of Me

by AgentDonegal



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beware section II pet/animal death, Beware section V hurt no comfort and major character death, Established Relationship, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Getting Together, M/M, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Loves Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Other: See Story Notes, She had a good long life but in case you're not up for reading it skip that section, They switch but mostly top Nicky tbh, Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, kink meme prompt: begging, spoiler alert: some of these things are SAD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:28:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentDonegal/pseuds/AgentDonegal
Summary: I beg your pardonI never promised you a rose garden-	Rose Garden,Louis PrimaDon’t forget me, I begI remember you saidSometimes it lasts in loveBut sometimes it hurts instead-	Someone Like You,AdeleWritten forthis kink prompt.Please read notes for warnings on each section. Thanks!
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 37
Kudos: 181





	Make A Beggar Of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I had no idea how to tag for this fic! So I'm going to go ahead and give the following heads-up:
> 
> Each chapter can be read as a stand-alone. I'm not going to say they're all alternate universes, because they're all in The Old Guard/immortal universe, as we know them, etc. However, as you'll see between chapters, there's...discrepancies, as if they can't all have happened at once in the same universe (i.e., two versions of the first time Nicky and Joe got together). Essentially these are all just snippets that came to my head with the prompt, don't take them as chronological or anything like that.
> 
> Section I: Getting together, ends in smut  
> Section II: Mostly fluff, but a pet dies (non-graphic, nice full life)  
> Section III: Crusades-era Nicolò is a problematic dick, Yusuf doesn't play like that  
> Section IV: Joe and Nicky are told nothing that lives, lives forever  
> Section V: Hurt, no comfort and major character death; aka the section that makes me hate myself for writing it (see my fic "this mortal coil" for a much better take on finding mortality)
> 
> +1: Marriage proposal and smut (Redemption for making you read Section V)
> 
> Anyways, without further ado. Here, we, GO!

**I.**

It’s fragile and beautiful and _years_ in the making, the way Nicolò has started to turn to him in the marketplace. How he’ll gesture towards a specific vendor and painstakingly string the words together in Arabic, “How to say, uh, is clean for you to eat?”

“Yes,” Yusuf answers, trying not to pay too much attention to his hummingbird heart, “Yes, it’s _halal_.”

Nicolò turns back to the merchant, gesturing for two and handing over his coin while waiving away Yusuf’s attempt to pay his share. Prizes in hand, Nicolò guides them to a shady space on the edge of town to sit and eat. He hands Yusuf his and when their fingers brush, neither of them jolts back as if bitten but they do share a smile and this, too, is a wonder.

They’re not always able to afford rooms in the city so many nights they spend under the stars. Neither of them complains. Unlike when they first started travelling together, they no longer sit on opposite sides of the fire. When the embers burn low, low, they lie their bedrolls side by side and sleep pressed back to back. Shielding each other from wildcats, bandits, the surprising cold of desert night.

There’s a miracle in the way Yusuf comes to know Nicolò as a light sleeper. Back when they hated each other, he simply assumed the man to be extraordinarily paranoid. Now that they’re— _this_ , with no reason to startle awake at every little movement, Yusuf still finds pale eyes watching him no matter how carefully he tries to pull away before the dawn to wash and pray. Watching not with terror or fury but with sleepy, unguarded warmth. It gives Yusuf leave to marvel at being set so easily and painlessly ablaze before moments later he recalls his duty and goes about it with a pleasant buzzing in his skull.

Funds eventually run low. For a night or two they carry an unusual shroud of silence. They become awkward, hyperaware of the mere gossamer that holds them together, both petrified to be the one to move too fast or accidentally tear it all down with the wrong words.

The obvious suggestion is they should part ways. To find jobs, to find their people (or their descendants), to do _something_ , but the _something_ would force them apart, so they continue to say nothing.

They’re back to back as usual and have both been pretending to be asleep for some hours already when Nicolò suddenly breaks the oppressive silence with, “Talk at me about your family.” The words are a strange mix of local dialects, Ligurian, Arabic, a dash of Greek and Latin but it’s theirs and they both understand it well. It is how Yusuf knows the conversation to follow is worth speaking and being heard clearly.

Yusuf smiles sadly and squints off into the dark. Lifts his eyes then to the heavens for a bit of light to guide him. Even after so many years below this same sky, the same stars, it’s breathtaking. He wraps his cloak more tightly around himself and heaves a great sigh.

“My father was a merchant. A rather poor one, if I may be honest. Because he was a good, decent man. Always settled for the lowest price from those in town who could not afford otherwise. And as the years went on, as conflict started to reach our city…there were many who could not afford much. I was his apprentice, then his partner.  
“My mother felt poorly about how many hours, years I sank into the work. She was always lamenting, ‘Oh, my poor Yusuf, has to watch his brothers get married while he is married to the shop.’ But I loved it, and I loved them both dearly. I was never made to wonder about their love in return.”

“You miss them,” Nicolò says.

“…When I close my eyes, I can hear my mother’s laughter at the antics of my siblings and I. Nicolò, she’d put her whole _body_ into it. It was a sight to be seen.”

 _I’ve seen it,_ Nicolò thinks, picturing Yusuf with his head thrown back, eyes twinkling, folded nearly in half with his abundant joy. Then Yusuf adds, “They’re surely dead by now.”

“That’s…” Nicolo starts, stops. Yusuf feels him shrug.

“Hilarious?” Yusuf suggests, but the joke—poor as it was to start with, too bitter for what they are now—falls flat. He doesn’t feel much like joking, and anyways, Nicolò doesn’t laugh, nor does he try to suggest another possibility.

“So, you never…took a wife?” Nicolò asks quietly, long after Yusuf assumed the man to have finally found asleep. Nicolò feels Yusuf’s shoulders tense, the muscles along the long line of his back flexing.

“There was a young woman,” Yusuf starts, then stops. Nicolò says nothing.

“There was a young woman,” Yusuf starts again almost a full minute later, voice calm and immeasurably sorrowful, “A woman who I would have wed, yes.”

“Yet…you did not return to her?”

“When I left for Jerusalem, she did not expect me to return,” Yusuf says, “If I had, it would have been a loveless affair. I would have struggled to give her children. She no doubt grieved for me for a time, because she was kind, and then moved on.”

“I’ve called you dickless before, Yusuf. I did not realize then that my battle-taunts were so accurate,” Nicolò says, deadpan, and Yusuf barks surprised laughter into the night despite himself.

“Not dickless. Just uninterested.”

“Oh,” Nicolò says. Yusuf’s laughter dies in his throat. He wonders, not quite randomly, if Nico keeps his knife under the pack which he rests his head upon. It’s been many years since they’ve taken up arms against each other but suddenly the space between then and now seems much shorter, the atmosphere thinner. It’s a long time before either of them speaks again.

“You did not ask, but I…there has been no wife for me, either,” Nicolò says in that slow, careful way of his, “The priesthood didn’t forbid it, exactly, but…it made it easier to overlook my lack of one. My lack of… _interest_ , in one.”

Yusuf can stand it no more. He sits up and turns, balancing his weight on one palm so he can look Nicolò in the eyes. The man shifts, lying flat across the ground to stare up into Yusuf’s face. His expression is carefully neutral. Yusuf asks, “Will you stay?”

“Yes,” Nicolò says softly, and then, as an afterthought, as if the words don’t shift the very earth beneath Yusuf’s body, “We are better together.”

They take whatever work they can find, so long as there’s vacancy for two. 

For some weeks they’re hired hands on a goat farm. Despite several hilarious follies during which Nicolò learns never to turn his back on a ram ( _“Especially when you see it pawing at the ground like that, Nico, really, you should have seen that coming. Rahimahullah, the look on your face!”_ ), they both agreed there is a particular pleasure in this type of labor.

There are several children on the estate who take an immediate shine to Yusuf. Nicolò doesn’t blame them; he was a son to a noble family who thought children were just fine, so long as they stayed out from underfoot and were very quiet. He doesn’t quite know how to act around them, and they know it, so mostly he just stands to the side when they come around. They are incessantly tugging at Yusuf’s robes, asking him questions, delighting in how easily distracted he is from work to instead sit in the shade and enthrall them with a seemingly endless supply of stories.

Nicolò doesn’t begrudge his friend these frequent breaks. For one, Yusuf always throws himself bodily into the work once the children disperse to make up for lost time although Nicolò has insisted time and time again it’s not necessary. He has long suspected this is just how the man is, rest nor work, doing nothing by halves. Besides, Yusuf’s animated voice is a constant, pleasant background noise as Nicolò continues nearby without him.

He’s clearing weeds from the garden, half-listening to the current tale—something about two frogs—when he feels a tug on his tunic. He looks down into the wide eyes of Fareeda, the youngest girl at two or three years, who is holding out her little fist to him. Nicolò crouches and holds out his hand. She gently places a dirt-covered rock in his palm and then looks at him expectantly. He blinks at it, turning it over and over in his hands.

“For me?”

She nods, a large, sunny smile breaking over her face.

“Thank you,” he says solemnly, clenching it in his fist as if it is a precious gem. She skitters away with a giggle, back to join her siblings for the end of the story.

Yusuf, who has been watching the exchange without pause, watches the grin spread over Nicolò’s face. Where others may pitch the stone once little eyes are no longer watching, he watches as the once-invader straightens and carefully pockets it for safekeeping.

 _Please_ , Yusuf thinks without context, swallowing tightly at the ache in his chest.

A few days later, Yusuf spends an afternoon repairing a fence while Nicolo goes after the escapee. The chase through the rocky foothills must have been quite the enterprise because upon his return he’s stripped bare to the waist, the back of his pale neck bright red with the sun but smiling victoriously. The little renegade stretched across his shoulder’s bleats indignantly about her return.

Yusuf nearly takes his thumb off with the hammer he’s swinging when he catches sight of him. The pain is temporary, but he sucks the digit into his mouth on habit and allows his eyes to wander over surprisingly broad shoulders tapering down to a lean waist. He swallows hard and forces his gaze upwards again but finds no relief. During the chase Nicolò must have lost the tie that normally holds his long hair up and away from his face. It falls halfway to his shoulders, perfectly framing a strong jaw and long neck. Yusuf hopes the tie stays lost.

Their eyes meet after too much time has passed for either of them to deny that’s where they should have been the entire time if they were trying to pass as anything other than polite. Yusuf is suddenly aware those bright eyes were staring intently at his thumb as he suckled it into his mouth. Nicolò lowers the indignant animal off his shoulders and straightens, the tip of his wet, pink tongue darting out to wet dry lips.

When they leave the farm several weeks later, pockets momentarily full, they spring for rooms at a quiet inn. The little road is well-travelled by caravans moving between two middle-sized cities and they have no doubt their swords will be hired if they are patient and are intelligent about their spending in the meantime.

It is Nicolò who suggests, nonchalantly, they may conserve their funds further by taking only one room instead of two.

Yusuf agrees with what he believes is an excellent impression of indifference despite his entire face gone pleasantly numb, despite the itch in his fingertips as he approaches the innkeeper and passes payment over for a single room.

They pretend to care about the various trappings inside their room—a desk, a tub for washing, a kit for Nicolò to shave the way he regularly bemoans he needs—up until the lock clicks into place behind them. They’re never sure afterwards who plastered themselves to who first, only that Nicolò’s hands were suddenly buried in Yusuf’s curls—

(his soul had sung in the hesitation in the long-fingered hands upon his turban, the quiet, _Can I?_ which fell from full lips, and Yusuf begged, _Yes, yes_ )

—Yusuf’s hands suddenly upon Nicolò’s hips. They fall into bed together. Yusuf arches his neck and stares up at the ceiling beams as Nicolò slots himself between his thighs, hears his own voice crack around _yes_ and _more_ as a warm hand slides beneath his tunic.

“You’ve done this before,” Yusuf grunts as Nicolò presses a kiss to Yusuf’s neck, nibbling at the hinge of his bearded jaw. Groans as deft fingers pinch at a hardened nipple, then trace swirling patterns down, down, until a large, warm hand is cupping Yusuf’s throbbing length through the thin fabric of his hose.

“Yes,” Nicolò agrees but does not elaborate. Not to be outdone, Yusuf rucks up Nicolò’s tunic and slides his shaking hand down the front of his hose. Relishes in the hiss of pleasure in his ear and the full-body shiver through the body pressed close, so close.

There have been other bodies, other men shaking apart in his arms. Yusuf has never wanted any of them as badly as he does this one. He _craves_ the little whines from Nicolò’s throat, would do anything to hear more of them.

“Is it good?” Yusuf asks, grinning, twisting his wrist in the way he himself likes. Nicolò moans and thrusts against his palm, once, twice, before suddenly rearing back, forcing Yusuf’s hand away. A bolt of fear strikes deep into Yusuf’s heart at the grimace of regret passing over those strained, pale features.

“Nicolò? What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Nicolò says quickly, stroking a hand over his side to settle him. Yusuf shivers at the touch, at the gravel in Nicolò’s voice, “Except you are far too coherent and I am about to come in my hose. I have wanted this too long for it to be over so quickly.”

Yusuf flounders. He wants to ask _how_ long, opens his mouth instead to say it’s alright, they have time—nothing but time, really—but chokes on his words as Nicolò slides down his body. Clenches a fist and brings it up to his mouth to stifle the shout which rips from him at the slick heat of Nicolò’s mouth through the thin fabric of his underclothes.

Nicolò doesn’t stop until Yusuf is a rambling, writhing mess beneath him, and then it’s only to peel away the decidedly soaked fabric. Yusuf sits up, shucking his shirt and tugging at the laces holding downright offensive amounts of clothing on Nicolò’s body until they’re both bare. They lean into each other’s space instinctively, pressing their foreheads together and openly panting.

“Use my thighs,” Yusuf mutters, “Please, Nico. _Please_ —”

**II.**

A sound calls Joe up from the pleasant dream he’s having. At first he thinks it’s Nicky shifting about in his sleep or crying out from one of his infrequent but gut-wrenching night terror but when he opens his eyes his heart is sound asleep beside him.

It’s only because they’re on sabbatical and because it’s Joe that Nicky doesn’t wake when he eases out of bed. Barefoot and shirtless, sweatpants hanging loosely from his hips, Joe makes his way downstairs. He and Nicky have made this place their home many times over the centuries, this little two-story cottage nestled between lake and mountains. On the second to last step he settles his weight with intuitive familiarity to the far left side so the board underfoot doesn’t creak.

He stands on the landing for a moment, contemplative, before making his way to the kitchen. Ten minutes later he’s standing on the back porch, mug in hand. Ribbons of steam rise from his coffee just as the ground fog swirls about his feet, encasing their lush back garden in morning dew. Everything is grey, soft, peaceful. Joe watches the horizon, tracks the appearance of the first few tendrils of light. Knows soon the sky will be awash in brilliant hues of pink and orange, wonders if he should wake Nicky so they can watch it together.

He doesn’t realize he’s been subconsciously waiting for the sound until it comes again from the tall grass just off to his left. He sets his mug down on the tiny patio table and crouches, smiling.

Ten minutes later, Nicky finds Joe sitting cross legged on the back porch. He’s facing way and hunched over so he can’t quite see what’s caught his attention, especially at this hour, but given the soft-spoken endearments flowing steadily from him Nicky has an idea of what he’s in for.

He comes up behind Joe, reaching for the forgotten coffee on the table and taking a sip as his hand finds Joe’s bare shoulder. He looks straight up and back from his seat on the ground and their eyes meet. Joe’s curls are in disarray and he’s smiling _like that_ , the laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes filling Nicky with such fondness for a moment he cannot find his voice. He does not resist the temptation to bend and press a kiss to Joe’s temple.

“Good morning,” Nicky murmurs against warm skin, then pulls away with a sigh. “And what has stolen you from our bed at this hour, hayati?”

Joe holds out in his hands and proudly displays a kitten no more than three weeks old. It’s a pathetic little creature, grey and scrawny, all head topped with miniscule wedges for ears. It mews forlornly and Joe tucks it back in to the safety of his body, stroking his thumb over its little spine over and over again. It settles against him, tucking its little face into his chest and already drifting back off to sleep.

“Joe,” Nicky murmurs, as if it’s not already over the second Joe looks up at him with those dark brown eyes wide and pleading.

“Nicky, she was so cold and all wet from the grass,” Joe laments, “She must have been out here alone all night.”

Nicky sighs but reaches out to scritch the tip of his finger between the tiny wings of shoulder blades. As he draws away, Joe captures his forearm and presses a kiss to the soft inner skin of his wrist.

“Nicky. Please? Can we keep her?”

“Although it is very sweet of you to ask so nicely, you know I can deny you nothing,” Nicky reassures him, ducking in to press a soft kiss to the corner of Joe’s mouth.

Aida, to the endearing surprise of only Joe himself, flourishes under his loving care. She grows up to be a rambunctious little nightmare, ruining dozens of Joe’s canvases with her paint-stained pawprints of lawlessness. Some of them he can recover with his artistic skill, turning pawprints into happy little bushes. Some are marred forever, and these turn out to be Joe’s favorite.

“It’s abstract, Nicky,” he says, giving Aida a scratch under her chin which makes her cock her head toothily. Nicky snorts into his wine and knows better than to argue.

Nicky swears at her with heated affection only animal lovers understand when she bats his wineglasses, vases, any delicate thing from various tall surfaces throughout their home. The lectures don’t seem to stick, possibly because she is a cat, possibly because Nicky always follows up with a treat and a thorough petting.

It becomes habit, the nights which start with the gray fluff sharing the bedspace between their ankles only to wake with her hot breath upon their faces, purring like a race engine.

The years keep coming. Aida’s face grows white with age while they remain exactly the same. Occasionally she still gets into one of her monkey moods where she bolts suddenly from the room, kicking off one of the walls on her way out, but they come few and far between as time marches on until one morning Nicky descends the stairs to find Joe sitting cross-legged on the patio, shoulder shaking in silent sobs. Nicky puts his hand on Joe’s shoulder. Joe looks up at him, tears streaming down his face. Aida is curled peacefully in his lap, for all the world looking exactly like she’s asleep.

“Oh, my love, I’m so sorry,” Nicky murmurs, pulling Joe into his chest and petting over his curls repeatedly. “You were so good to her, so good.”

Decades later, a painting still hangs in their cottage, a beautiful landscape dotted with rebellious little pawprints.

**III.**

Yusuf lies still, panting helplessly into the back of Nicolò’s neck. He’d be well content to shut his eyes right where he is except for the bony elbow which eventually nudges his ribs. He extracts himself with a hiss and collapses to the side, sated and content.

After several moments he’s aware of the muttering beside him. Forcing himself to focus, organizes his wits and comes to recognize the murmuring as a prayer.

“And here I thought you already called out for God quite adequately,” he teases.

Nicolò snorts and says, “Sins demand recompense, even pleasurable ones.”

“What sin? Because we are both men?” Yusuf asks, indulgent in his post-orgasmic haze. He’d expected this conversation some months prior when they first fell into bed together. Not like there was a bed in sight that first time, unless you counted the pillowy soft wrongness of the corpses all around. Instead of wine, candles, they’d gotten drunk on the smell of blood and the sun-glare reflecting off their blades. They’d been so desperate; desperate to rally against all the horrors they’d witnessed, against their inexplicable continued vitality.

The desperation has followed them here, many miles from Jerusalem where they’re splayed out side-by-side in bed with sweat cooling on their skin. In his head Yusuf’s already begun riffling through manuscript upon manuscript to find the perfectly charged prose to whisper into Nicolò’s ear the next time he has him pinned, aching and needy. Perhaps, _with cups of comfort wash the call to prayer from my mind. Give me some wine to drink in public, then fuck me from behind._

“All intercourse without intention of proliferation, nor under the union of marriage, is a sin,” Nicolò says, rousing Yusuf from his daydream, “And yet it happens often enough. Being with a man is not so much more a sin than that.”

“Oh. Yes,” Yusuf agrees, surprise arching his eyebrows. Nicolò reaches over and runs his fingertips along the expressive wrinkles which pop forth on his forehead from the gesture. It’s tempting to let the topic go, to let his eyes slip shut at the gentle tug of blissed-out slumber, but there’s a hushed murmuring in the back of his mind. Not quite alarm but enough to meet Nicolò’s eye and prompt, “So, what are you praying about?”

“You’re not Catholic,” Nicolò replies. Yusuf is suddenly wide awake. He sits up, trying on a smile which feels too tight across his lips.

“Oh, so you’ve noticed.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nicolò says, eyes tracing over Yusuf’s shoulders, the planes of his chest and stomach. He’s so busy greedily raking his gaze along smooth, exposed skin that he doesn’t notice the flicker of dismay in Yusuf’s face.

“No?” Yusuf grunts, sounding far away from himself.

_Don’t say it, please don’t say it, I’m begging you--_

“No. You’re different.”

_Oh, you son of a whore._

Yusuf sucks his teeth and chuckles. There are very few people who know him intimately enough to know he’s furious, and he hates his traitor heart for its little shiver of joy when Nicolò stills, immediately sensing his misstep. But late, so late.

“Different, am I? Why, because I suck your cock?”

Nicolò recoils as if burned and is already shaking his head, reaching for him.

“No, no, that’s not—”

“Tell me, priest,” Yusuf growls, shrugging away and springing to his feet. He jabs his ringed fingers in Nicolò’s direction, “Did you pray for forgiveness after you slaughtered my kin on the battlefield? No, I suppose not. Wading through streets ankle-deep in our blood, forgivable, but my love? _That’s_ too steep a price, is it?”

There is silence for several beats, then, “You love me?”

Yusuf stills.

“Don’t,” he says in warning.

“Yusuf, I lo—”

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Yusuf snaps. He lunges for his clothes, dropping his tunic over his head and jamming his feet into his boots. He’s shaking, his whole body and his voice as he continues, “You don’t, because I am not _different_. I am proud of who, what I am, not in _spite_ of it but _because_ of it. Loving—” Yusuf stops to swallow a sob. Silence stretches on for several moments. When he continues, his voice is even despite the tears shining in his eyes, “ _Fucking_ me is not redemption for what you’ve done. You shall not break yourself against my stones.”

**IV.**

A shared glance and they excuse themselves before hiking away from the flickering warmth of the fire. The chill of the night goes unnoticed and soon the amicable murmuring of their new companions is lost to the evening winds.

There is no destination except distance from the yawning horror of what they’ve just learned.

_Nothing that lives, lives forever._

They’d died so many times and so many ways. By each other’s hands at the beginning, many times, but then still at others’ and nothing made a difference. Were they to blame for yielding to the inevitable comfort of assumption?

They’ve walked nearly a mile when Nicolò says abruptly, “If I should go first—”

Yusuf turns swiftly, framing his beloved’s sharp cheekbones with gentle palms, and presses their lips together determinedly. Nicolò’s hand shoots up to cup the back of Yusuf’s neck and their mouths move together with a familiarity and tenderness which has only grown over the century or so they’ve been as one.

They part only when the burning in their lungs demand it. Still, they remain close enough so he can feel the whimper formed by Yusuf’s lips, “ _Don’t_.”

Nico frowns. Don’t die first; don’t speak of it? He uses the ball of his thumb to wipe the tears sliding down Yusuf’s cheeks, kisses the salty paths down his beard, down his neck.

“Together, then. We go together.”

“You cannot possibly promise that,” Yusuf says, but looks at Nicolò in such a way that utterly destroys him. Hopeful, lost, impossibly young and incredibly ancient at the same time. He can see the plea there, drowning in those inkblack eyes. _Please. Please._

“I promise you, Yusuf. Together. Yes?” Nicolò insists, sliding his hands up the back of Yusuf’s neck to bury in his thick locks. Yusuf shuts his eyes, swallowing repeatedly, but nods.

“Together.”

**V.**

Joe wakes laughing from a dream so vivid for several moments he clings to the feel of sand between his toes, the smell of sea-salt winds which tousle his sun warmed curls. The dream which is really a memory starts to fade swiftly, as they do. Before it goes completely he reaches for his Nicky with a happy grin on his lips.

“My love, do you remember—”

Joe’s ringed fingers find cool sheets instead of a warm body and the dream evaporates in the unforgiving light of day. Grief slinks malignantly into his brittleglass bones and replaces the air in his lungs with battery acid.

“No,” he hears himself say in a voice which is completely emotionless. “No, not again. Allah, have mercy. End this, for I cannot bear it.”

Yet his traitorous heart continues to beat in the twilight cage of his ribs, refusing to stop its treacherous, solitary course. Nicky would want him to get up so he does. He eats a piece of dry toast, drinks his coffee black despite centuries of preference with cream and sugar. He doesn’t taste it. He sucks it down while it’s still much too hot and doesn’t sob when the burns on his tongue heal themselves promptly, just thinks, _it was supposed to be destiny. One lie in two thousand years—I forgive you, of course, but Nicolò. Please. If you can. If your soul is somewhere nearby. Wait for me. Wait for me. We’ll go on together, like we were supposed to. Like you promised we would._

+1

“Marry me,” Nicky asks. Joe blinks up at him, eyes glazed, and grunts out a completely inelegant, “ _Huh?_ ”

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib,” Nicky says, punctuating every few words with a decadent and completely indecent roll of his hips. He palms Joe’s thigh, hiking it up on his hip for a deep thrust, “Joe. My destiny, love of my life. _Marry me._ ”

Nicky’s aim is unerringly accurate in the best way. Joe throws his head back with a hiss as Nicky’s cock drags across his prostate. Their bodies have known each other for a thousand years, would know each other in the darkest night and in an endless void.

They know each other here, now, under the shade of a pomegranate tree in Malta. Joe clings to the lean, shifting muscles of Nicky’s back. They’re both sweat-slick and sun dappled. Joe feels as if he’s swallowed an ember, fill to bursting with adoration for the man moving above him, in him.

“We’ve been married a hundred times before,” Joe points out, breathless. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Is that a yes?” Nicky asks, and wraps his hand around Joe’s leaking cock and begins to pump it in time with his grinding.

“ _Yes,_ ” Joe moans, hips stuttering helplessly as he shatters apart. When he settles back into himself what feels like a million years later, Nicky is still and trembling in his arms. “Oh, my love. My precious man, my one,” Joe murmurs, stroking Nicky’s spine. “Your turn. Come on, now. Use me, I’m yours.”

Nicky starts to move. Joe bites back a groan, over-sensitized, but of course Nicky notices. He pulls out as gingerly as he can despite Joe’s protests and takes himself in hand. Joe nuzzles the side of Nicky’s face, kissing at the corner of his mouth, at his temple, at his mole, urging him on as he slides his hands up and down Nicky’s back, grabs palmfuls of his flexing ass.

“Yes, that’s it. I’m yours, as you are mine. Nicolò di Genova, my _husband._ Come for me.”

Nicky does as he’s told with his face pressed into Joe’s shoulder, moaning brokenly and striping Joe’s torso with thick spend.

Nicky collapses in a heap on top of Joe, who grunts out a laugh. After a moment, Nicky laughs along with him, and the sound sends Joe’s soul flying. Shaking like a colt, Nicky supports himself back on his elbows to allow Joe some breathing room. They nuzzle and pet at each other’s bodies, murmuring sweet nothings into each other’s skin. Nicky reaches into their pack—ever organized, always ready is his Nicolò, Joe thinks fondly—and wipes them down enough so they’re comfortable.

“I meant it, you know,” Nicky says. They’re half-dressed, lounging in the shade, feeding each other freshly plucked pomegranates. Joe laps at the purple-pink stains at the tips of Nicky’s fingers, chuckling.

“I’ll marry you in any place, in any time,” Joe says with a laugh. “You know this, hayati.” Nicky traces his fingers over the ridge of Joe’s brow, over the curve of his bottom lip.

“You called me your husband. Nicolò di Genova,” Nicky says. Joe frowns, amused. Nicky smiles. “Of course, I am your husband. I can barely recall a time when this was untrue. But, Yusuf…I have not been of Genoa for many, many centuries. _You_ are my home, my sanctuary, my own.” Nicky’s smile fades. They lock eyes and Joe loses his breath.

_Say it. Say it._

“I am yours. I am Nicolò al-Kaysani.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm...sorry. There was an extraordinary amount of sad, hopefully there was enough sweet/smut to make up for it.
> 
> As usual, I tried my best to be non-problematic. I'm not a POC, nor am I Muslim, so if I screw up please point it out to me. I try to educate myself but if I make a mistake, be confident it is unintentional and I will fix it if it's pointed out to me. Love these guys, and I love you guys! Thanks for reading!


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